A number of small cultivators of land have no capital. A money-lender supplies what they require on condition that they sell their crops to him at a price which he is able to fix. From the circumstances of the case the money-lender makes an enormous profit. The cultivator has barely the necessaries of life. This is usury, in the bad sense of the term, but is more correctly called oppression or extortion. Again, a man lends money to ignorant inexperienced youths, on promise of repayment when they come of age. This, too, is oppression or extortion. Similar oppression is witnessed when bad houses are let to poor people at high rents. It is not, then, that usury, in the sense of oppression or extortion, is inherent in money-lending; but it belongs equally to every transaction between man and man, where any unrighteous dealing is practised. P. T. OUVRY. GRANGE-OVER-SANDS, _October 1st, 1879_. DEAR MR. MALLESON,--I protested strongly yesterday against our remarks, made on the spur of the moment, being printed and submitted to Mr. Ruskin's criticism, and what I said then I feel as strongly still. But I have no objection to send, as a comment on his Letters, a volume of sermons which I published last year, because I think that, in that upon the hallowing of God's name, I have not taken the restricted view which Mr. Ruskin accused the clergy of taking, and I think also that (except in the sermon upon the doctrine of the Trinity, which was written before the others, and is tinged with the prejudices of early training), I have set forth God the Father as a Being of infinite, tender, fatherly love. So far as snails may follow in the footsteps of greyhounds, and bats look in the same direction as eagles, I think some of us clergymen are getting our feet and our eyes into the same track as Mr. Ruskin's. It seems to me that all of us who think upon religious matters, laity or clergy, whether men of genius or commonplace people, are feeling our way at present to something better and truer. Men like Mr. Ruskin, like steamships, dart on to their destination; and feebler minds, like sailing vessels, are a good deal at the mercy of the _popularis aura_ and the winds of doctrine, but both are on their way to the same point. I send the volume by the same post as this letter. Yours very faithfully, H. R. S. _From the Rev._ A. G. K. SIMPSON, _Brighton_. We are convinced that the love of God is the originating cause of all His dealings with mankind, and are glad to meet him on the broad platform of "Our Father which art in heaven;" only premising that it is a platform not new to us, but on which we have long taken our stand.